'Argo' on a roll with big win at SAG Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A few weeks ago, the Oscar race looked wide open. The stately, historical "Lincoln" seemed like the safe and likely choice, with the provocative "Zero Dark Thirty" and the quirky and inspiring "Silver Linings Playbook" very much in the mix for the Academy Award for best picture.

But now, an "Argo" juggernaut — an "Argo"-naut, if you will — seems to be rolling along and gathering momentum as we head toward Hollywood's top prize.

The international thriller from director Ben Affleck, who also stars as a CIA operative orchestrating a daring rescue during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, received the top honor of best ensemble cast in a movie at Sunday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards, their equivalent of the best-picture Oscar. It's a decent indicator of eventual Academy Awards success, with the two matching up about half the time.

The film, which also stars John Goodman and Alan Arkin as Hollywood veterans who help stage a fake movie as a cover, has received nearly unanimous critical raves and has proven to be a box-office favorite, as well, grossing nearly $190 million worldwide.

But "Argo" also won the Producers Guild of America Award on Saturday night, which is an excellent Oscar predictor, and it earned best picture and director statues from the Golden Globes two weeks earlier. The Directors Guild of America Awards next Saturday will help crystallize the situation even further.

The one tricky thing at work here: Affleck surprisingly didn't receive an Academy Award nomination in the director category, which most often goes hand in hand with best picture. (There are nine best-picture nominees but only five slots for directors.) Only once in modern times has a film won best picture without a directing nomination: 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy." The other two times came in the show's early years, at the first Oscars in 1929 with "Wings" and for 1932's "Grand Hotel."

Asked backstage at the SAG Awards what might happen when the Oscar winners are announced Feb. 24, Affleck said: "I don't do handicapping or try to divine what's going to happen down the road with movies.

"I didn't get nominated as a director and I thought, 'OK, that's that.' Then I remembered that I was nominated as a producer," said Affleck, who already has an original screenplay Oscar for writing 1997's "Good Will Hunting" with longtime friend Matt Damon. "Nothing may happen but it's a wonderful opportunity to be on the ride and I'm really honored."

Many of the usual suspects throughout the lengthy awards season heard their names called again Sunday night, including Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor for his intense, deeply immersed portrayal of the 16th U.S. president in "Lincoln." Accepting the prize on stage, he gave thanks to several of his colleagues including "The Master" star Joaquin Phoenix (who did not receive a SAG nomination), Leonardo DiCaprio and Liam Neeson.

Backstage, Day-Lewis elaborated for reporters that DiCaprio urged him to stick with Steven Spielberg's project, which was in the works for many years.

"He said, 'Don't give up, he's the greatest man of the 19th century,'" Day-Lewis said. "So this is all Leo's fault."

His co-star, Tommy Lee Jones, also won again in the supporting-actor category for his lacerating portrayal of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in Spielberg's Civil War epic.

Anne Hathaway, the front-runner for best supporting actress at the Oscars and a winner already at the Golden Globes, won at the SAGs for her performance as the doomed prostitute Fantine in the gritty musical "Les Miserables."

"I'm just thrilled I have dental," Hathaway joked on stage.

But in the already-tight best actress race, Jennifer Lawrence made things a little more interesting in winning for the drama "Silver Linings Playbook." The 22-year-old plays a damaged young widow opposite Bradley Cooper, whose character is fresh out of a mental institution. Jessica Chastain, the winner at the Golden Globes, has been her main competition as a driven CIA operative searching for Osama bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty."

Lawrence said on stage that she got her SAG card at 14 — which was only eight short years ago — for a promo for the MTV reality series "My Super Sweet 16," which she said felt like the best day of her life.

"And now I have this naked statue which means that some of you even voted for me, and that is an indescribable feeling," she said.

On the television side, the popular PBS series "Downton Abbey" bested more established shows like "Mad Men" to win the TV drama cast award in just its first nomination. "Modern Family" won the comedy cast prize for the third straight year.

And Dick Van Dyke received the guild's life-achievement award, an honor he presented last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore.

After receiving a lengthy standing ovation from the audience, he asked his fellow actors, "Aren't we lucky that we found a line of work that doesn't require growing up?"

____

Contact AP Movie Writer Christy Lemire through Twitter: http://twitter.com/christylemire

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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U.S. Durable Goods Orders Exceed Estimates

WASHINGTON — Orders for durable goods jumped 4.6 percent in December, while a gauge of future business spending also rose, a sign that corporate worries over tighter fiscal policy at the end of 2012 may not have held back investment plans as much as feared.

The Commerce Department said on Monday that overall durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent, more than expected.

In addition, nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans, edged higher 0.2 percent. The government also revised higher its estimate for November.

Analyst estimates for goods orders averaged around 2 percent.

Separately, the National Association of Realtors said contracts to buy previously owned homes in the United States unexpectedly fell in December after three months of gains.

The trade group said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, dropped 4.3 percent to 101.7.

The drop in contracts, which the Realtors group blamed on the tightening stock of homes, suggested resales could fall again in January after slipping in December.

“The supply limitation appears to be the main factor holding back contract signings in the past month,” said Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief exonomist. “Supplies of homes costing less than $100,000 are tight in much of the country, so first-time buyers have fewer options.”

The NAR expects sales of previously owned homes to increase 9 percent this year after a similar gain in 2012.

Home resale contracts were down in three of the country’s four regions last month. They increased in the Midwest.

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Djokovic Wears Down Murray for his 3rd Straight Australian Open

Aaron Favila/Associated Press

Serbia's Novak Djokovic celebrates his win over Britain's Andy Murray on Sunday.

MELBOURNE, Australia — His legs are stronger than in the past. So are his résumé, his nerves and his coaching staff. But Andy Murray still cannot solve the tennis riddle that Novak Djokovic represents at the Australian Open.

But then Murray  — beaten again in the final on Sunday  — is in excellent company.

Melbourne and its blue hard courts and aromatic eucalyptus trees are nearly half a world away from the Serbian mountain resort of Kopaonik, where Djokovic first learned to play the game. But Djokovic, just 25, has transformed Melbourne Park into his Grand Slam redoubt: the distant outpost where he is toughest to trump, not just for Murray but for all challengers.

No man has beaten him here since 2010, when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga managed it in five sets in the quarterfinals. Since then, Djokovic has used the Australian Open as a launching pad to the No. 1 ranking and has reeled off three straight titles, generating squeak after squeak with his quick-moving feet and generating innumerable breaches in opponents’ morale with his ability to contort and extend his body in pursuit of other men’s best shots.

Murray, his boyhood friend and onetime doubles partner, knows Djokovic’s strengths as well as anyone. He shares many of them, but Murray gradually faded on this clear night in Melbourne after more than holding his own in the early phases of the  grueling match — suffering from a toe blister and a surprising inability to break serve  — as Djokovic put the finishing touches on his 6-7 (2-7), 7-6 (7-3), 6-3, 6-2 victory.

“What a joy,” Djokovic said in his postmatch remarks in Rod Laver Arena. “It’s an incredible feeling, winning the trophy once more, and it’s definitely my favorite Grand Slam, my most successful Grand Slam. I love this court.”

Djokovic won his first Grand Slam title here in 2008 and is the first man in the 45-year Open era to win three consecutive Australian Open singles titles. Only two other men have won three or more Australian championships in a row: Jack Crawford from 1931 to 1933 and Roy Emerson from 1963 to 1967.

No one has covered the angles and the corners quite like the elastic-limbed Djokovic. He dived to his right like a goalkeeper midway through the second set to hit a forehand behind the baseline, a modern update in this era of supreme defense to the diving volleys that net-rushers like Boris Becker used to hit.

Midway through the fourth set, as he took control of this final for good, he sprinted to his left and skidded into nearly a full splits with his back to the net as  hit a towering defensive lob that rebooted a point that Murray eventually lost with an error.

Then there were the moments  — his trademark — when he was pushed wide into what was once considered a vulnerable position and responded with something decisive.

“When he’s on defense he can actually win the point with one shot; that’s an evolution of the game,” said Andre Agassi, the former American star and four-time Australian Open champion who handed Djokovic the trophy on Sunday night.

Agassi continued: “It’s remarkable to watch him play so far behind the baseline; to watch him play so far inside the baseline; to watch him be so defensive; to watch him be so offensive; watch how he upsets the spin and how he creates his own set of rules out there.”

Murray, another supreme defender, can thrive by those rules, too, just not quite yet in Melbourne.

“His record here is obviously incredible,” Murray said.

Before this final, Murray had said that he was “ready for the pain,” but he was presumably referring to marathon rallies not foot pain. He was treated for a blister after losing the second set and when the match was over and Djokovic celebrated on court, Murray sat down, removed his shoes, tossed them aside and raised his racket high as if to smash it in frustration.

He refrained and also refrained from using his foot problems as an excuse.

“I very rarely get blisters, but I mean 90 percent of the players on the tour will have played this tournament with some sort of blister or problem,” Murray said. “It had no bearing at all on the result. It just hurts a little bit when  you run.”

Running and then running some more is a requirement when Murray and Djokovic meet.

“When you’re playing the points like we were there, the positions you’re sort of getting yourself into on the court, you expect those sorts of things,” Murray said of his blister.

What was unexpected was that two of the best returners in the world were unable to break each other’s serves in the first two and a half sets. The first break came in the third set with Murray serving at 3-4; Djokovic would then break him twice more in the fourth while never losing his own at any stage.

Murray speculated that the increased speed of the court in Laver Arena this year might have played a role in their difficulties in breaking serve.

But fast or slow, Murray has experienced nothing but frustration against Djokovic at Melbourne Park, losing all three r matches. He was soundly beaten, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3, in the 2011 final, then beaten last year in a five-set thriller of a semifinal that was a harbinger of Murray’s greater performances to come.

Murray defeated Djokovic on the grass at Wimbledon on his way to the Olympic gold medal in London and then beat him in another epic final to win his first Grand Slam singles title at the U.S. Open.

 But he could not use that for leverage in Australia.

 

 

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Another look at RIM’s BlackBerry Z10 smartphone

Research in Motion (RIMM) is scheduled to announce the new BlackBerry 10 operating system and its latest flagship smartphone a press event on January 30th. The BlackBerry Z10 is rumored to come with 4.2-inch HD display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel rear camera. The smartphone is also said to include 2GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, NFC, 16GB of internal storage and an 1,800 mAh removable battery. The not-so-secret device has already appeared in a number of leaked images and videos, and on Thursday it was the subject of yet another leak from Evleaks, which posted two images that it said were press photos of the upcoming handset.

[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]

[More from BGR: Why the iOS-Android feud is so intense: It’s about core philosophy more than products]

BGR exclusively reported that the BlackBerry Z10 will priced under the standard $ 199 and could be offered for $ 149 or less with a two-year agreement. The latest rumors suggest that the smartphone could launch at the end of February.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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'Argo' wins Producers Guild Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Argo" continues to shake up the Oscar race by taking the top honor at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday.

Ben Affleck, coming off winning Golden Globe Awards for best motion picture drama and director for the real-life drama, received the award handed out at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

"I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I'm still working as an actor," he said in his acceptance speech.

Affleck also stars in "Argo" as the CIA operative who orchestrated a daring rescue of six American embassy employees during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. George Clooney and Grant Heslov share the producer award with Affleck as "Argo" beat out the Civil War saga "Lincoln," which has a leading 12 Academy Awards nominations.

Other nominees in the PGA movie category were "Les Miserables," ''Zero Dark Thirty," ''Beasts of the Southern Wild," ''Django Unchained," ''Life of Pi," ''Moonrise Kingdom," ''Silver Linings Playbook," and Skyfall."

Along with honors from other Hollywood professional groups such as actors, directors and writers guilds, the producer prizes have become part of the preseason sorting out contenders for Academy Awards.

The big winner often goes on to claim the best-picture honor at the Oscars on Feb. 24.

Disney's "Wreck-It Ralph" won the guild's animation category, beating "Brave," ''Frankenweenie," ''ParaNorman" and "Rise of the Guardians."

"Searching for Sugar Man" took the documentary prize, beating "A People Uncounted," ''The Gatekeepers," ''The Island President," and "The Other Dream Team."

Showtime's "Homeland" won the producer's award for television drama series, which beat out "Breaking Bad," ''Downton Abbey," ''Game of Thrones," and "Mad Men."

The ABC sitcom "Modern Family" took the prize for best comedy series for the third straight year, beating "30 Rock," ''The Big Bang Theory," ''Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Louie."

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

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French Report Some Progress in Mali

KONNA, Mali — French and Malian troops have taken control of the airport and the bridge over the Niger River in the eastern city of Gao, the stronghold of one of the several Islamist groups that have captured northern Mali, the French Defense Ministry said on Saturday in a statement.

In an indication that French forces are making some progress in their battle against Islamist rebels, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s defense minister, said in the statement that many of the vehicles used by the rebels as well as their logistics bases had been destroyed in the fighting. The statement provided no other information, and there was no immediate word on casualties.

French officials have been wary of disclosing the precise movements of their 2,500 troops on the ground in Mali, and on Friday a French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, declined to confirm or deny that Malian or French forces had taken Hombori, where two Frenchmen were kidnapped in 2011. But he said that French aerial strikes were continuing against militants farther north.

Residents of Hombori, however, told news agencies that they had seen French and Malian soldiers in the town, which is 155 miles southwest of Gao, one of the three large cities in northern Mali that had been under militant control.

The military maneuvers came as human rights investigators continued to uncover evidence of executions by the Malian Army, whose record of abandoning the field of battle and committing atrocities has raised serious questions about its fitness to fight alongside French and other international troops headed here to fight the rebels in the North.

Gaëtan Mootoo, an investigator with Amnesty International, said witnesses had given him credible testimony that the army had killed two men near the city of Niono on Jan. 18, well after the French intervention had begun.

According to Mr. Mootoo, the soldiers asked one of the men, Aboubakrim Ag Mohamed, if they could search his house. When he complied and they found nothing suspicious, they asked him to step outside. A few blocks from his house, he was shot and killed, the witness said.

Mr. Mohamed’s cousin, Samba Ag Ibrahim, was executed nearby, Mr. Mootoo said, when he encountered the same soldiers. The two bodies were abandoned, and villagers buried them the next day, he said.

More people have been killed in Sévaré, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. At least 11 bodies were tossed into a well in a suburb. The city is a garrison town, home to a huge contingent of Malian soldiers, raising the question of how so many could have been killed under their noses.

“Sévaré is a heavily militarized place,” Ms. Dufka said. “It is highly likely the security forces were involved.”

The problem of reprisals of perceived supporters of the rebel groups is only likely to get worse as the military offensive moves northward, where Islamist groups have spent months occupying towns. Such reprisals could have an ethnic dimension, focusing on Tuaregs, Arabs and other groups seen as sympathetic to the Islamic rebels.

“There is a rule-of-law vacuum, which was created by the departure from northern Mali by the institutions mandated to protect the civilian population,” Ms. Dufka said. “Given the high level of ethnic tension, the risk for reprisals is extremely high, which is why nipping this in the bud is paramount.”

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

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4 tips for creating a successful Twitter parody account

The guy behind @GowanusDolphin learned his lesson the hard way

A chorus of Twitter elite got really angry on Friday when an opportunistic user decided to register @GowanusDolphin, a horrible account that premised itself on a dolphin trapped in New York‘s murky Gowanus Canal. 

Not sure how I feel about parody account @gowanusdolphin. Poor guy. Don’t find funny at all.

SEE MORE: Connecticut massacre suspect: How the media IDed the wrong guy [Updated]

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) January 25, 2013

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this @gowanusdolphin account is far worse than the Holocaust.

— Joel Johnson (@joeljohnson) January 25, 2013

It’s because we all laughed at the fake Rahm Emanuel guy that these fucking things exist. We brought @gowanusdolphin on ourselves.

SEE MORE: The 17 most memorable tweets of 2012

— Cord Jefferson (@cordjefferson) January 25, 2013

The offender, who has since apologized for being a jerk, learned his lesson the hard way. Don’t let the same fate befall you. Here, four helpful tips for creating a successful* Twitter parody account should the opportunity ever arise again:

1. Don’t use animals
Remember @BronxZooCobra fondly? Neither do we. Predicating your shiny new Twitter handle on a headline-grabbing animal is difficult for two reasons: (a) Animals don’t talk. You’re creating its voice from scratch; and (b) People tend to like animals more than they like other people, so as a rule of thumb, you should probably be making fun of actual human beings.

SEE MORE: Social media masters, ninjas, and gurus: How Twitter pros describe themselves

2. Don’t base it on news
When a mild 5.9-magnitude earthquake rattled New York in 2010, Twitter exploded with parody accounts. (“Boom!” and “Whoa!” and that sort of nonsense.) None of them were funny. None of them were sustainable. Take a lesson from Bloomberg social media director (and the web’s leading voice in parody account hatred) Jared Keller:

If you create a parody account within fifteen minutes of a news event you are the worst person on the planet and I hate you.

SEE MORE: Instagram vs. Twitter: Why their beef is bad news for you

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) January 25, 2013

3. Be funny
Ha ha, you have to actually be funny, which is easier said than done. And “humor,” as we all know, is 100 percent subjective and varies from person to person, NOT TO MENTION it requires constant mental dexterity that 99.99 percent of the population simply isn’t cut out for. So make it easy for yourself. Self-impose some parameters and employ a weird spin like @NYTOnIt or @__MICHAELJ0RDAN. Maybe you’ll even get a book deal! (Probably not.)

4. You probably shouldn’t make a parody account
Ignore everything I just said. Don’t make one. Sorry.

SEE MORE: Should Twitter be forced to reveal racist users?

*Just kidding.

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